Day Six - It Hits Me Like a Train

Day 6.1
Naptime: 1:50 - 2:10, 20 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness: 0 1 2 3 4 5
REM: No.
Time since last proper sleep: 129h 10 mins
Succesful naps in a row: 17
Time since last oversleep: 83 hours 30 mins

I tried to take extra care to remember any REM etc. but didn't remember any of it anyway. God damn it, I want REM. Nap had a decent effect in terms of refreshedness. It was the usual quality as well, pretty fast falling asleep, instang wake-up to alarm. Though I might've woken up like seconds before alarm, not sure exactly.

I wonder how long this slight groggyness tiredness is gonna last? The whole adaptation process has been nothing like I expected. Where's the zombie mode? I'll take it that there's not such coming. I guess I'm lucky. I guess I should be trying to create some sort of schedule for myself next. 2 work phases doesn't sound too bad. I'd like to leave some phases permanently free to do whatever I want. I'll get on it now. I wrote one schedule during last attempt, but I really went overboard with it. It's stuffed with shit and I'm not sure anyone (least me) could follow it without burning out.

Day 6.2
Naptime: 5:55 - 6:10, 15 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness: 0 1 2 3 4 5
REM: No.
Time since last proper sleep: 133h 10 mins
Succesful naps in a row: 18
Time since last oversleep: 87 hours 30 mins

Same groggy & slightly tired shit. I was actually do tired I returned to bed but I knew I was doomed to oversleep if I'd continue & besides it didn't even really help so I got back up.

Short testing at typera.tk proved that I'm over 100 characters / minute behind my normal typing speeds, meaning that my motor skills haven't yet picked up like they're supposed to. Still, I guess it's early days of my adaptation. I should only get worried after ten days of perfect adherence and it has been barely 4 days since my last & only oversleep. I am feeling functional so no real troubles. 18 naps in a row.. That feels pretty awesome.

Well, I'm having surprising trouble right now. I don't feel right in the head and I'm a bit tired. A bit more than usual.. I'm afraid I might have as hard a day as yesterday. If you count from the oversleep, I'm only at day four now. That basically means that today and tomorrow will still be in the intensive sleep-deprivation range. And we know that I haven't been remembering many REM-phases during my naps.

The funny thing is that since I never adjusted correctly back to monophasic, instead sleeping inversely during day and staying nights awake my body still wants asleep more on the day. I have had my worst moments during the day which is lot of better than during the night, when you're all alone in the dark. It's easier to push through when sun is burning your eyes and there's people around you notifying if you start "nodding".

Day 6.3
Naptime: 9:45 - 10:30, 45 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness: 0 1 2 3 4 5
REM: No.
Time since last proper sleep: 137h 30 mins
Succesful naps in a row: 0
Time since last oversleep: 0 hours 0 mins

So yeah, I overslept, but hardly by half an hour, luckily there was people waking me. I hope it won't have too adverse effects on my adaptation. It shouldn't have anything worse except clearing my counters. And increasing my alertness. I'm hitting the zombie mode though slowly but surely. I need to be very careful now. Follow the schedule perfectly. Completely ace it. I don't want to come this far and ruin it all by getting lazy. No more oversleeps. Let's put in another 18 naps in a row.

I'll scratch all my productive plans for today. I am too wrecked to do anything. I need to divert all energy on staying awake and on the program.

I know that 95 % of this blog has been just me babbling randomly and it will intensify in coming days. I am running out of stuff to do. I mean by that, stuff that I can do while I'm tired that doesn't have big risk of me falling asleep. I can't watch tv or poker videos cause like I've said anything passive kills my brain temporarily. I can't do anything creative because everything is struggle and even if I'd manage to do something, it's mostly shit. I can't play poker because it demands far too much brainpower. Commodity that I don't have at the moment. So all there really is is writing this kind of boring to death but therapeutic flow of thoughts to the blog or play games that challenge my survival instinct. There really isn't much else to do.

One thing about the oversleep. I'll tell you exactly what happened: I went to bed already at 9:40, 10 minutes before the official naptime. I figured I'd read magazine for few minutes and that I could keep myself awake for that time. I fell asleep before I intended but I also remember staying awake for few minutes, so it's not that bad. Then I woke up to alarm 10:10. This wouldn't have been any kind of problem if I just haven't gone instantly back to bed after setting off alarms. Now I don't actually remember it so it's possible I hardly woke up. I just know that my alarms were sent off and that my computer's alarm had been set to 4 hours for the next nap. Basically it was 25 minute nap followed more or less without break by another 20 minute nap. It isn't that serious really, but I'm going to treat it as if it were. It probably won't reset my progress, it's going to be a step back but not massive. I still will look to beat the old nap-record again with run that starts now. I'll focus more on this. I have to. I owe it to myself. It really looks like that this time, I can pull it off. I just need to survive through these tough moments, that came in uncharacteristically late this attempt.

It's still over 2 hours to next nap. Looks like I'm going to have to type a lot this time.. Just joking. I'll grab something to eat and keep myself active. I'll be back to write about next nap, which hopefully is completely trouble free. I really need to consentrate on motivating myself to keep going and getting the fuck up immediately, not going back to bed or anything silly like that.

Rest of this phase went well. I played Modern Warfare 2 again and it refreshed me to the point that I actually might've got something productive done.

Day 6.4
Naptime: 13:50 - 15:20, 90 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness: 0 1 2 3 4 5
REM: Yes
Time since last proper sleep: 142h 50 mins
Succesful naps in a row: 0
Time since last oversleep: 0 hours 0 mins

Oh shit. Just what I didn't need - accidental oversleep number two and this was long enough to ruin my progress. I don't really know why I didn't wake up to my alarm. But now we really took a huge step behind. I'm not discouraged completely yet, but I feel like it's another five days for me from almost the beginning but with extra sleep dep to "get me started". Sucks really hard.

I feel so disillusioned. My sis told me she didn't know whether or not to wake me since she didn't know whether I was sleeping for real or not. I wrote my napping times up for her. I just wish I can get the ball rolling as fast as I can and can hit to that 2 days asap. Then survive through the worst sleep-deprivation before my sis leaves.

Everything so far has been for nothing. That feels the worst. I guess I should take solace from the fact that I didn't even deserve to go uberman so easily.

Day 6.5
Naptime: 17:50 - 18:10, 20 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness: 0 1 2 3 4 5
REM: No
Time since last proper sleep: 146h 50 mins
Succesful naps in a row: 1
Time since last oversleep: 2 hours 50 mins

Nothing much to say. Back on track.

Day 6.6
Naptime: 21:40 - 21:50, 10 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness: 0 1 2 3 4 5
REM: No
Time since last proper sleep: 150h 50 mins
Succesful naps in a row: 2
Time since last oversleep: 6 hours 50 mins

Kind of unhappy about this nap. It was super-short which in itself isn't that big of a problem since I was refreshed, but the problem for me was that none of it was inside the normal nap-frame. I went to bed a little too early not expecting to fall asleep that fast.. Well not at least to wake up that fast! That said, I did stay in bed for the whole time.

I guess there's some after-oversleep trouble to be expected. I'm now experienced enough to see a pattern in all this. Now what follows is few easier phases before another crash. All I know is that I need to improve my succesful naps in a row -record if I'm going to adjust successfully.

The Uberman Mentality

I had not before realized how much effort it actually requires to switch to polyphasic. Sure I knew that it would be extremely hard during the first days. What I didn't expect was that it would require consistent effort for weeks. But now that I've readed much more about polyphasic sleep, I know what I'm up against.

I had only read about Steve Pavlina and his success which made it look easy. Now I didn't think it was, but it seemed like that if you're determined and dedicated, anyone can pull it off and the worst point is over after three or four days - which might be true, but getting to that point without trouble is very, very hard.

I just ignored the failures. There's tons of blogs all over internet about failed attempts in different polyphasic schedules. It was probably good though that I didn't waste any thought on them and didn't let it put me down. All I needed was to acknowledge that there is those. But now that I've failed time and again and seem like adding my blog to the bodycount (I'm determined not to) I need to really read any material that there is. Even about the failed accounts, because they might have something valuable to offer. Those who adjusted with relative ease can't help me now.

Thing is, that when I was aiming to stay on schedule for few days, I should be expecting trouble for at least a couple weeks. I made it about a week with very low on sleep on the third attempt, but even then I had constant oversleeping. I get no closer to succeeding.

In the polyphasic sleep Google group there was said that extra naps for easier adjustment are not necessarily good. They need at least to be consistent and there's no-one who had succeeded with free-running sleep. That would be cool, but I guess I have to go for strict form of Uberman with no extra naps or anything. Pavlina recommended them for avoiding oversleep.. Well, my own experiences tell me now that it won't help to that; as you can read my last nap was extra nap that I described "that nap hit the spot". I felt great after it, yet when I went back to normal nap I overslept heavily. They won't help in that, what helps in that sense is working methods of waking yourself.

It's half about consistency and it's half about resilience. I have the latter, I need to mantain former. I need to have set sleeping times and need to be able to follow through with them. I can strech it a bit, but only a little. I need to wake up to alarm - partly it's not down me, partly it's down my body not agreeing with to whole think and shutting down the alarm while mind is still asleep.

I had a tired moment at couple hours back around 22:00. I realized just now that it was probably because I had already adjusted to certain extent to uberman - my body wanted to go back sleep after four hours awake despite me sleeping 10 hours prior to that. I should've maybe gone to bed then, but it's too late for that now. I'm not resetting completely after all when I do go to sleep. I aim to do it around the same times where my last schedule were settled - 0, 4, 8, 12, 16 or 20.

It's the mentality that I have that I hope will push me through. I had planned to give it up after the last failure. But I find I can't. I just really want to do this. Not because I want to have extra time. Sure, that's nice, but I'll probably waste it anyway. I want to do it for the experience, I want to do it for the lifestyle. It just seems so fitting schedule for me. I don't know, maybe there's some need to prove it to people that it can be done (there has been some can't rants already). All I care is that now I have the true uberman mentality, now I just have to make it count and do this.

I will be continuing with the format I started in the last attempt. I like it and I think it's pretty clear.